Danny Meyer

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1:14When I started the River Cafe with Rose Gray in 1987, I was told over and over how cutthroat it would be. Danny Meyer convinced me otherwise. Opening Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern in New York more than 30 years ago, he proved values matter. One could not only treat staff with the respect they deserve, but make customers happy. Happier, as we always say, when they leave than when they arrive. What surprised us all was that for his next act, Danny launched Shake Shack in 2001, a hot dog stand in Madison Park. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, when I have a question about fair policies for the people who work with us, or how to think about expanding or contracting the River Cafe, or whether it would be possible to do exchanges with our best chefs, I call Danny.

2:06My heart just melted. Right back at you in so many ways. I turn to you as my touchstone for taste. There we are. And we're on the 18th floor. The most incredible view to be in New York is to be high. People love Soho and they love Greenwich Village. I want to get high. I was going to say I want to get high when I come to New York. But for me, being high is the great luxury.

2:36We're here surrounded, of course, no surprise, by food. Amazing donuts. Would you call those donuts? I would call them crullers. Crullers, yes, from Daily Provisions. From Daily Provisions. and we have ice cream from Danny Meyer's daughter, Haley, and she makes great food, great ice cream, and she cooked in the River Cafe. She came and worked with us. So she's part of the family. Now, do you want to tell us about the ice cream? Yeah, let's... Actually, you know what I want to do? I want to tell you about the crullers first because this ice cream is going to temper for a couple minutes. Okay, fine.

3:15Okay. And we can open them and help that process go. But the crullers are pretty much the signature item at a restaurant called Daily Provisions, which we opened about six years ago. Right next door to the brand new Union Square Cafe, when we had to move it after 30 years, we had this extra little space. We didn't know what to do with it. And we said, let's give a gift to the neighborhood. And what did the neighborhood need? We said a better cup of coffee, a really good bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, a really good donut, and a good roast chicken for dinner. And that's daily provisions. And the Cruller is the only donut we serve.

3:57And Ruthie, if you don't think that's one of the top three donuts you've ever had, I won't keep talking on this podcast. So I want you to cut yourself some of that. So tell me about Crullers because tell me about donuts. That's not my great knowledge. So donuts are often cakey. Yeah. This, as you will taste on one bite, is not cakey at all. In fact, it's quite eggy. And what I love about the cinnamon cruller, we only make three different kinds. We make a maple cruller, a cinnamon cruller. It's crunchy on the outside, and it's almost, here, take a bite, because it's better if you try it than if I describe it.

4:42Here we go. So Kroller, as I said, the cultural heritage of a Kroller is where? Whole thing. Come on. Okay. Show me what you got. Mmm, how delicious. First time anybody on this podcast has actually given me something to eat. I really appreciate it. Well, come on. This is delicious. Isn't that good? Mmm. It's almost like juicy. What's really good is the contrast between the outside and the inside. Yeah, it's very achy, right? This is divine. Not too sweet. You know, just morsh. Oh, God. It's a good thing I don't live next to a daily provision. So that is a cruller, and that is a damn good one. That's a cultural heritage.

5:25All crullers are donuts, but not all donuts are crullers. These are, and so tell me how you make them. Do you know? I do, but that's the only thing we got going for us. When you tell me how you make your... Oh, I see. State secret. I got it. Yeah. Like everything at the River Cafe. Yeah, right. I'm going to give anything away. This is a little cafe. I'm just going to stop talking and just eat. They're just so good. No, no, no. Have a sip of your coffee with it, please. Okay. This is nice. All right. So those are crullers. I can get used to this. And then Hallie, after she learned how to make ice cream at the River Cafe and also in Rome.

6:01I think she learned in Rome. And then she came to the River Cafe. She opened Cafe Pana right down the street from Daily Provisions. and she is doing such a great job. What year was that? That was exactly three years ago. They just had their third birthday. It's kind of seasonal too, isn't it? She did strawberry ice cream more in the summer. Yeah, she's got six that are always on, and then she changes one every single day. Now there's a few here that we're going to try, and we have to because you gave her a lot of great information. I'm going to start off with Odd's Dream. Okay. They're still not called.

6:42Is that what it's called? It's named that for her mom, Audrey, because this is Audrey's favorite flavor combination. What's in this? Which is vanilla and peanut butter. So swirled through it. Swirled through it. I think I better try some while we're at it. Or I'll get in trouble with two ladies in my life. This is delicious. How do you have to try this? Well, that sounds good. What's good? You know what's really good is the vanilla ice cream part. Mm-hmm. When she was growing up, was ice cream her favorite dessert? I think she has probably had ice cream every day of her life for the last 25 years.

7:27So as a child, you always knew. Ever since she was five years old, yep. Wow. She worked in an ice cream store when she was at Yale in New Haven. And she just, way before she opened a place, every single one of her Instagram posts was eating ice cream in someone else's place, which is pretty cool. Now that everybody travels, everybody has access to, obviously, the Internet so they can see pictures, read recipes, hear how people feel about the food, etc. I think the curiosity of chefs to kind of cross-pollinate is fascinating. The key, though, is the gimmicky stuff has, in my entire career, it never lasts.

8:14It's kind of like music. There's eight notes in the octave, no matter what you try, plus the sharps and flats. And yet there's a myriad number of songs that can be written. And I think the same thing is true in our industry. There's really nothing that new under the sun. Now, what I love about Ruthie and the River Cafe, and this is something that I really believe in deeply, it's not so much about invention as it is cooking food I know but cooked better than I knew it could be. There is an enormous amount of skill involved with that. And I wish more chefs understood that in excellence lies creativity.

8:56It's not just coming up with something. I always say we don't do ideas you know sometimes somebody will say I have an idea for something but generally it's a progress of what we did we did a pair of almond tart strawberry season we'll put strawberries or we'll put what Haley is doing with her ice creams it's a process, it's your work every day yeah that's what made me fall in love with barbecue for example when we did Blue Smoke what a great pit master does they don't reinvent it They say, you see that angry piece of meat called brisket? I'm going to figure out something to do with that over the next 12 hours.

9:35It's going to blow your mind just because of meat selection, dry rub, temperature. What kind of wood did I smoke it with? How did I hold it afterwards? All that stuff is really, really hard. And there's a huge difference between your favorite brisket and your least favorite brisket. But it's not about can I drizzle balsamic vinegar on it? And I would say that from a food standpoint, the reason you are my favorite chef in the world, and I will tell that to everyone, not just your many listeners here, is that you have the confidence to make sure that what's on the plate is essential to that plate.

10:15And if it's not essential, it's not on that plate. And you find a way to make it taste amazing. Do you know how when you edit something, when you wrote your book or when we try to do something, you go through and you take out a word. I was saying today that a friend of mine who is a screenwriter told me, don't use the word that. You can always take a that out of a sentence and it still works, which is interesting. And I said that, you know, when we plate, we do the menu because, you know, we write the menu for two meals. And then we write it. And I was talking to a chef on the phone because I was late.

10:45We were talking about her menu. And I said, go through it and just take one thing off almost everything you've done. Just take one, whether it's the parsley, whether it's the salsa verde, whether it's the pancetta, just take one thing off. And I'm not talking about the kind of cooking that went, you know, the cuisine masseur or that. But it's just thinking, isn't it, about what you really need? Does that really need to be there? Yeah. There's a writer's expression, which actually applies to the kitchen, applies to almost everything, which is learn how to murder your darlings, which is kind of a great – have you heard this?

11:18Well, I heard Mark Twain once said, if you see the adjective, shoot it. But we all, whenever we write something or cook something, we assume that that first clever idea we had is essential to it. And generally, it's not. But it's generally the thing we're most in love with that needs to be the thing that comes off.

11:47did you know the river cafe has a shop it's full of our favorite foods and designs we have cookbooks linen napkins kitchenware tote bags with our signatures glasses from venice chocolates from You can find us right next door to the River Cafe in London or online at shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

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13:58Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your living space today with no risk returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get up to 60 % off plus free shipping and free returns. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Authors are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Of all the books we have, and I see some of them on your desk, it was interesting to me that you chose for a recipe, Punta Rele alla Romana, and a recipe from Rome, one of my favorites, and one of that is in season very soon. So would you like to read the recipe? I would love to. Tell people how to make it and tell me why you chose it.

14:35Well, first of all, I love Rome. That is my, I don't know, it's just my soul place. I always associate puntarelli with Rome. You don't really get it too often here in New York. When I've had it at the River Cafe, it's better than when I have it in Rome, which is hard because we have an expression, hot dogs always taste better at the ballpark. You would think puntarelli only tastes better in Rome, but at the River Cafe, you know exactly what to do with it. It's a type of chicory that is not typically found in the United States. It's not the easiest thing to handle, and you know exactly what to do with it.

15:16It's about the temperature. It's about the balance of the anchovies. So may I read the recipe? Please read the recipe, and feel free to add or take away or comment on anything you like. Okay, so we're going to have two heads of puntarelli, five salted anchovies, and I bet you have a point of view on where I should get those anchovies, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, one garlic clove, two dried chilies, one teaspoon of black pepper, four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and one lemon. So to prepare the Poitarelli, fill a bowl with ice cold water, adding as many ice cubes as you can fit in there.

15:58Pull the hollow buds from the Poitarelli heads. Using a small knife, slice the buds very thinly lengthwise. Place them in the water to crisp until they curl up. This will take about an hour. Rinse and fillet the anchovies. Cut them into one-half-inch pieces and place in a small bowl. Cover them with the vinegar and stir to let the anchovy dissolve. Peel and chop the garlic very finely and add to the anchovies with the crumbled chilies and pepper. Add the olive oil. Spin dry the puntarelli as for a salad. Place in a bowl and serve over the anchovy sauce. Serve with lemon. Yum. Yum. It's interesting because it feels like a very easy recipe to make, and it is.

16:48But when we're explaining it to the chefs who are making it for the first time, the balance of anchovies, the balance of olive oil, no salt because the salt, it's so salty with the anchovies, the crispness. I think for myself, it's the ideal way to start a meal. I love it so much, and it just works. It works. You know, when I was growing up, we used to go to restaurants, and you'd be met with the relish tray, which was the celery, carrots, and Lindsay pitted black olives on a bed of crushed ice. But there was something about that really cold, crispy celery that made it taste better. This is not really that different.

17:29No, you're right. Maybe every culture has their crispy vegetable. Tell me about growing up then. Let's talk about, you were talking about restaurants, but when you said the words when I was a kid. So what was it like growing up in the Meyer household? In St. Louis, Missouri? Yeah. Well, we didn't, you know, we had a lot of cooking going on at home. My dad was in the travel business, and he was the first American agent for an organization called Relay de Compagnie, which would later become Relay and Chateau. Oh. And so we had French people living in our home. In your home? In our home who would work in his office by day.

18:05And then at nighttime, they were around the table. And French was spoken every night, lots of times so the kids wouldn't understand what they were talking about, which encouraged us to learn French. There was always a bottle of Beaujolais on the table. So without knowing it, I was getting a little bit of an education. Who did the cooking? My dad cooked a lot. My mom did as well. He and I cooked together. He taught me how to cook. Did he? His favorite dish was Ratatouille, and we had a dog by that name, Ratatouille, when I was seven years old. So I grew up, you know, with the smells and sounds and fun of cooking.

18:43And so it was just kind of part of my upbringing. I got to go to France pretty early in my life, and then later Italy. And then I was a tour guide working for my dad. He started selling group tours. And when my sister, who's older than I am, turned 20, she got to pick a city. So she picked Copenhagen. When I was 20, I picked Rome. My brother picked Paris. And interestingly, we all three had a kind of love affair with the place we picked. I would go back to Rome to study political science, and that was supposed to lead me into being a lawyer. But thank goodness I would have been the world's worst lawyer.

19:25Thank goodness I converted quickly, and I said, why not? Why not embrace where my real passion was? So growing up, you had a lot of French food. Was it from that region? Because France is so regional. It was from everywhere. No, it's not just that we had French food. I grew up appreciating French food, but I really, you know, growing up in St. Louis, we didn't have French restaurants per se. We had great burgers. So I had smashed burgers, which would one day lead to Shake Shack, and frozen custard, which would one day lead to Shake Shack. We had, here's what St. Louis actually did have and does have.

20:06An amazing immigrant population. It began with lots and lots of Germans. And that's how you get restaurants that I used to go to called Schneidhorst and Anheuser-Busch, the beer company, was there, et cetera. Lots and lots of sausage makers, lots of beer companies. So there was that going forward. There was also something, and it still remains, called the hill, the Italian hill. So lots of Italians came to St. Louis. From the south. From the south, primarily. And they had their own style of cooking that came to St. Louis. To this day, they all have almost the exact same menus. So their carbonara has cream in it, which you would never do.

20:46Toasted ravioli with marinara sauce. That one, I wonder where that came from. Toasted ravioli with cornmeal. That is intriguing. Go figure. I don't know, Ruthie. But did you like it as a kid? Of course I did. Of course you did. I mean, do the people you know in London like Marmite or whatever that stuff is called? I wanted to do a photography project when I came to London. I was doing art school of giving Americans Marmite and taking a photograph of the exhibition after they ate it. I promised toasted ravioli would only put a smile on your face. It's really good. Yeah, okay. Okay, on from toasted ravioli.

21:21Yeah, on from toasted ravioli. So you grew up in this culture of your mother's cooking, your father's cooking, which is interesting. And getting to cook. But what I really liked more than anything was going to restaurants. Yeah. I just loved it. There was one restaurant that is still around called Chris's. It's a German place, K-R-E-I-S apostrophe, Chris's. And they gave me an idea that I used when I opened Union Square Cafe at the age of 27. What was that? Which was to have a nightly special that you could depend on every night of the week. So you knew if you went in there on Monday nights, that was chicken and dumplings night.

21:57or you knew if you went in on Tuesday night, it was Sour Broughton night, which I didn't really care about too much. But they had a different special every night. We did that when I opened Union Square Cafe because I loved the idea that you could create a habitual regular. But they also did, which I loved, from the age of six on, they remembered my favorite table. I'm the guy, well, there's probably every kid, who liked to have the table underneath the cuckoo clock. But it meant the world to me that they remembered that. Well, I think that's what we talk about with restaurants, is that we were talking about this morning, that you'll go back to a restaurant if they didn't cook the sea bass to perfection.

22:36But you won't go back if there's a waiter that makes you feel bad about yourself. And then furthermore, taking it back to the positive side, you'll always go back where you feel most loved. And I remember the late James Beard was constantly accosted in airports, restaurants, everywhere, because everyone recognized the bald head with the bow tie. And obviously the question everybody asked James Beard was, what's your favorite restaurant, especially in an airport? Where should I? And he said, my favorite restaurant is the same as yours. Yeah. It's the one that loves me the most. Yeah. That's bad.

23:15Hard to argue with that. I would say that you never know with a table what they've gone through when they come in. They may have gotten lost. They might have been fired that day. They may be celebrating something. And most often, or maybe we should think about, is they may have saved up to come to the River Cafe. That's a really good point. They have really saved up to come. And so how are we going to make them feel that everything was here for them? And I think that's really something I learned from you. I think we've all learned that from you, is how to be happy making people happy. You know, simple as that.

23:52Well, the last thing I want to say about St. Louis is that was the biggest lesson I learned. Because St. Louis was long on hospitality. It wasn't necessarily the food. But then what I got to do, probably because of the privilege of growing up with a lot of travel, because my dad's company was a travel business, I got the flavor of really good food in Italy and in France. but I also was able to pair that with the kind of hospitality that I always got in St. Louis. And when I moved to New York at the age of 21, there wasn't a lot of hospitality around here. It was basically, you're lucky to be eating here.

24:31Yeah. And if you don't feel that way, we've got a really nice table by the bathroom for you. There was a lot of that kind of mentality left over from the Studio 54 era. That was what year? The red velvet rope. Yeah. What year was that? Well, I moved here. My first night here was the night John Lennon was assassinated in December of 1980. And I got my first apartment in 1981. It was not necessarily a nice city back then. So it was kind of a slam dunk when I opened Union Square Cafe to say, well, whoever wrote the rule that good food is going to taste worse because you're nice to people.

25:14If you like listening to Ruthie's Table 4, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.